Dream debut for a supreme singer

Thursday 1 February 2007 00:00 BST

Not just a pretty face: Beyonce proves she can act in Dreamgirls

There's only one thing I'll remember about Bill Condon's snazzy adaptation of the successful Broadway hit about the ups and downs of a Motown group, and that's the performance of Jennifer Hudson as Effie, the girl who never made it.

Hudson - a finalist on the reality contest American Idol, with no screen experience - is the single well-rounded character in a luxuriant movie which, even if it shows the Hollywood musical isn't dead, never really catches fire.

Perhaps it's to do with the music. It's always lively but seldom memorable and often more than a trifle samey. But then that's inevitable - the story tells how singing trio the Dreamettes (based on the Supremes), were sold to white audiences as well as black by smoothing out their sound and castrating some of the songs that commented on the racial tensions of the time.

Jamie Foxx plays Curtis Taylor Jr, the ambitious manager who blunts their edge. He begins as Effie's lover but, after forcing the group to provide backing for Eddie Murphy's soul singer, his eye is caught by Deena (a surprisingly unplastic Beyoncé Knowles).

Taylor dumps Effie and boots her out of the band in favour of Deena, whom he promptly marries. Effie is too volatile, not as pretty as Deena, nor as sylph-like.

The trick works and the Dreamettes become stars, even wowing staid old Britain and getting photographed with the Beatles. Whereas Effie, now with a child, is left to sing in nightclubs or not at all.

When she belts out And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going on the nightclub circuit, you see what the Dreamettes have lost on the way to gaining fame and fortune.

She may have been a disruptive influence, but Foxx's steely-eyed entrepreneur has deprived the public of a star who might have made a deeper impact than any of the others.

While there is magnetism in Hudson's performance, everyone else is merely competent. One could wish that Dreamgirls had been called Dreamgirl and concentrated on her more.

When she's not on screen, Condon relapses into a whole series of showbiz clichés, right down to those embarrassing audience reaction shots during the numbers.

These, however, are brightly lit and mounted with flair. But the music is repetitive and rather dull, however defiantly it is sung and however many great frocks the girls wear.

Hurrah for Beyoncé, who shows that she can act a bit and is not an entirely manufactured singer (she has nominations for best song to prove it).